Portal writer says he wants to start Portal 3 because he’s ‘not getting any younger’

The co-writer of the Portal games has said he wants Valve to start work on a third game in the series.

Speaking on the Kiwi Talkz podcast, Erik Wolpaw – who co-wrote Portal and Portal 2, as well as such titles as Psychonauts, Half-Life 2: Episode One and Two, Left 4 Dead and Half-Life Alyx – ended the show by stating: “We’ve gotta start Portal 3. That’s my message to… to whoever.”

He added: “I am not getting any younger. We are reaching the point where it’s crazy to think [that we’re] literally going to be too old to work on Portal 3, so we should just do it.”

However, Wolpaw also theorised earlier in the podcast that it may not be easy to get a new Portal game off the ground despite his history writing for Valve.

When asked if he’d like to make a third game, he replied: “Oh yeah, I would love to. I’d work on another Portal in a second, but I can’t make it happen by myself.”

After it was pointed out that he must have some leverage at Valve, Wolpaw replied: “Oh, I could advocate for it […] it might help a little bit, but the problem is [Valve has] 300 employees and I don’t know exactly the breakdown – how many of them are on the production side versus Steam business side versus legal versus whatever.

“So there’s a lot of opportunity cost to taking 75 people and trying to get a game made. As much as it seem like Valve often [is] just a bunch of people sitting around sipping gin and tonics by a pool, everybody’s working.

“They’re working all the time, it’s just you don’t always see the [result], it doesn’t always end up coming out, or it comes out years later, it gets turned into something else. So everybody is accounted for, I guess is what I’m saying. People are all doing something.

“So you’d almost have to take them – it’s like a revolution – [and] stir up a bunch of people to leave what they’re currently working on and come work on something else, in this case it would be Portal 3.”

Further reading

Valve releases Aperture Desk Job, a free game set in the Portal universe

The short tech demo is designed for the Steam Deck, but can be played on PC

The host then suggested that Portal 3 would nevertheless be profitable for Valve, to which Wolpaw agreed: “Hey, you’re preaching to the choir here, you’d make some money.

“The problem is, you would make money, but what kind of money will you make? Are you gonna make Counter-Strike: GO money? Probably not.

“But having said that, maybe every game doesn’t need to make Counter-Strike: GO money, you know, Gabe, if you’re listening,” he smiled.

Nintendo announced in February that Portal: Companion Collection, which consists of Portal and Portal 2, will be coming to the Switch later this year, bringing the series to a Nintendo system for the first time.